New Gear Focus: Radial JD7 Injector and Workhorse

New Gear Focus: Radial JD7 Injector and Workhorse

BB4 Studios has been amping up its equipment list, adding new tools for tracking, mixing and mastering. Two fresh additions are from Radial Engineering, a company with a penchant for innovation.

The first piece is in BB4’s dedicated tracking space, in the form of the Radial JD7 Injector. This guitar signal splitter is a 100% discrete Class-A unit Jensen Transformer Isolation with the ability drive up to seven amps at the same time.

Other special features include a built-in Radial DI with multi-out Reamping capabilities, and Drag Control load correction, which allows an engineer to replicate the load on the guitar pickup as if it were connected to a tube amplifier for the most natural sound.

“We often get material from clients that’s been tracked directly into their DAW,” explains Christos Tsantilis, designer of BB4 Studios and its in-house engineer. “Often the sound is what it is, we need to make it better, and EQs and compressors don’t cut it – that’s where reamping is so valuable. You need some authentic room tone added to that sound.

“That’s where the Radial JD7 comes into play. This unit is awesome if you need to reamp something, or utilize more than one amplifier. It gives you six isolated outputs, with two selectable inputs in the front, including one with a pad in it. Our signal path is right out of the DAW into the JD7, then into any or all cabs we have available, finally we’ll place microphones and rerecord the signal.”

Inside the control room, BB4 has installed a Radial Workhorse 500 Series eight-slot rack with 8×2 summing mixer. Not only does it have a unique “pooled” power supply that feeds high-demand modules, but it sports an 8×2 summing mixer for left-right signal panning, level control and muting.

“That is a workhorse,” Tsantilis says. “It’s very easy to install the 500 Series modules in it, and it sounds great. That’s important, because I’ve heard people complain about their 500 units not sounding right in a chassis — the Workhorse’s power supply is what makes the difference. Both of these Radial units are well worth having.”